We may go further, and say that whatever may be objected against the general facts of the Exodus, the list of stations (or mansiones) in the wilder- ness which is given in Nu has every appearance of being part of a conventional itinerary or pilgrim book, and is therefore susceptible of identilication and verification, altogether apart from the history in which it is embedded. All that we have to do with such data is to make such literary and topo- graphical investigations as will determine whether the routes indicated are possible, and the stages of the journey feasible.
One of the first things that will strike the careful reader of the account of the first stages of the Exodus is that there is a certain veri- similitude about the nomenclature. It is a mixture of Egj-ptian and Hebrew. Pithoni and Pihaliiroth are certainly Egyiitian ; Migdol and Baal-zephon as certainly Hebrew ; Succoth will be shown to be a mere Heb. perversion of an Egyp. name ; and there is even a suspicion that alternative names in the two languages are found in the narrative, as when the desert into which the Israelites go out is called in one place the desert of Etliam, and in another the desert of Shur. This is as it should be, if we bear in mind that we are on the frontier of Egj'pt, that the country next the frontier on both sides is in the hands of a Semitic people, and that the fortifications and great cities are in the care of the Egyptian Govern- ment.
The locality from which the Israelites emigrated is defined by the two store-cities, Rameses and Pithom, which they built for Pharaoh. From Rameses they started, and their first encampment is Succoth, which Naville has shown to be the equivalent of I'ithora. The identification of the two cities is of the first imjiortance. According to Brugsch {L'Exode et let ntonuinents Egijpticns, Leipzig, 1875), we are to identify Rameses with Zoan (Tanis), and to place Pithom and the district of Succoth in the N. E. comer of the Delta, between Tanis and Pclu.sium. He then adopts a surprising suggestion (previously ventured by Schleiden), that the Israelites passed along the shore of the Medi- terranean on a neck of land between that sea and the ancient Serbonian lake ; that the Egj'ptians followed them along the same course, but were overtaken by a rush of water from tlie Mediter- ranean and destroyed. On this hypothesis ho identifies Ethara with the fortification on tlie frontier of Kgyjit, Migdol with a Magdolon men- tioned in the Antonine Itinerary as being 12 miles from Pchisiuin, and Baal-zephon with Mt. Casius ; the sujiposed Red Sea (yam ijuph) turns out to be the Serbonian lake, as is suggested by
the name [yam sti}th=sea. of weeds). Unfortu- nately, this theory, which is stated with great confiaence and simplicity by Brugsch, appears to !>«> almost fatally vitiated by the fact that Pithom has been found somewhere else than on the Mediter- ranean seaboard, where Brugsch had loc^atcd it. It is to Naville that we owe this important dis- covery. His excavation of the mounds known as Tell el-Maslikuta, in the Wady Tumilat, on the line of railwaj' from Zagazig to Suez, and in close proximity to the modern Sweet-water Canal and to the line of the ancient Sweet-water Canal, has Ijroved conclusively that this place is Pithom [' abode of Turn'], and that its secular name, or at all events the name of the adjacent district, is Thuket, which may be equated with the Heb. Succoth. It is curious that the French engineers had suspected this mound to be the site of Rameses, and had named the adjacent railway statioi accordingly. It seems probable that Rameses will be found in the excavation of the mound Tell ellvebir ; Tanis is clearly excluded by Naville's discoveries. We are thus led to conclude in favour of an exodus along the line of the ancient canal, and the fugitives following this course would soon reach the frontier of Egypt and be stopiied by the fortifications which ran along the Isthmus from north to south. This is the station Etliam, which appears to coincide with the Egyptian x^'em or fortificntinn, and to be the same tiling as is meant by the Heb. shur or xvall. [The only ditliculty in this identilication lies in the fact that we should have expected a stronger guttural in the lieginning of the lieb. word]. The route is evidently one of the main roads out of Egypt ; and we may comparo it with a pajiyrus translated by Goodwin, wliich describes the pursuit of runaway slaves who follow this very road, and whose journey is described in very similar terms.
Several difficulties now present themselves. One of them relates to the question as to whether the head of the Gulf of Suez was not at the time of the Exodus much farther north than at present, and whether the sea was not actually connected with the Bitter Lakes. In that case the transit may very well have been made at the head of the Bitter Lakes. There is much to be said in favour of this hyjiothesis.
Unfortunately, none of the places mentioned in connexion with this part of the Exodus have been identified. Piliahiroth, Migdol, and Baal-zephon have all to be located. It has been suggested that Baal-zephon [Typhon] is the mountain Ataka to the S. of Suez, and that it is dedicated to the god of the north wind because Phtcnician saihirs used to pray for fair wind on their voyages down the Red Sea. Our own impression is that the case has not yet been made out for moving the head of the Red Sea so far north as the Bitter Lakes, and that it is more likely that the crossing took place not far north of the present Suez. [Its ancient Greek name Ctysma appears to carry a tradition of the disaster! The test for a true solution would api>ear to lie in a search for Baal- zephon, especially by examination of Mt. Casiuson the shore of the Slediterranean, and of Jebel Atakii at the head of the Red Sea.